


variation on the word sleep

by threadoflife



Series: sherlock ficlets [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Pining John, Season/Series 02, Sleeplessness, toes and feet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, you can't sleep. It's always for a different reason, but Sherlock is a common feature in all of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	variation on the word sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Margaret Atwood's poem, which I think underpins the pining here nicely. 
> 
> http://www.boppin.com/poets/atwood.htm
> 
> Go read it, so that I can tell you: yeah. She's that awesome.

Sometimes, you can't sleep. It's always for a different reason, but Sherlock is a common feature in all of them.

You wish that were surprising.

*

Some nights you can’t sleep—for no particular reason—so you stare up at the ceiling. You think about going downstairs for some telly but then you don’t, because you suspect Sherlock might be a light sleeper for all he’s been awake the last two nights again and should be dead in bed.

If you woke him up, he’d come shuffling out of the bedroom in his sheet and would wordlessly join you, and you’d sit on the couch together at two thirty in the morning and watch some crap. He’d complain about it but remain sitting there anyway, and you’d laugh about him and pretend your eyes wouldn’t keep darting to his feet periodically, the way it sometimes happens. Because sometimes this does happen in daylight—you both on the couch, watching crap telly—and Sherlock is next to you in pyjamas and his dressing gown, knees drawn up and feet on the coffee table. His bare toes, right there, and it was a curse when you saw this the first time: when Sherlock complains and gets this one particular sort of whingeing tone in his voice, those toes will curl. 

Crap telly always causes that whingeing tone. You’ve become awfully fond of crap telly, lately. You may be a bad man.

Suddenly the idea of not going down in order not to wake Sherlock by watching crap telly seems stupid beyond comprehension. Sherlock is always banging on about how he doesn’t need his sleep anyway, doesn’t he? It’s all just transport to him, so—

Outside, it starts raining. It’s just a slow patter against the window, but it makes your thoughts pause so you actually notice the spiral you’ve thought yourself into again. Your eyes snap open, and you exhale through your nose before you focus on breathing exercises. You do them until you’re somewhat clear enough again to be able to steer your traitorous thoughts away from places you don’t want them to go.

This is why you hate not being able to sleep. All the silence, all the stillness—practically invitations for your mind to wander. Especially to useless, painful things.

Bare toes. Christ.

You clench your jaw and redirect your eyes to the ceiling.

You breathe the temptations away.

*

It doesn’t always work, of course.

Sometimes you drink a glass of whiskey or two before you go to bed. You don’t do it often—it doesn’t just leave a literal but also a proverbial bad taste in your mouth because then you think of Harry. You don’t do it often, but you’ve done it more often lately. God knows why. You just felt like it.

Tonight you had three and a half glasses. Sherlock had one, too, but he’s a much slower drinker. By the time you stumbled out of you chair, he was still drinking. You thought you could see him smile at you over his glass as he watched you.

It was probably just the alcohol. You had three and a half glasses.

You’re not a light drinker. You can take some heavy stuff. But even with just a bit in your blood you become much more uninhibited, so it’s good you left him early. That’s good. You don’t want to bother him, you think, as the door falls shut behind you and you make your way to the bed. He doesn’t need your silly thoughts, he’s got his own brilliant ones. They’re not as banal as yours, or as base. He’ll be thinking of something complex and wonderful now, still sitting down there, before the fire with the glass in his hand. You remember how his fingers spanned the entire glass. His thumb was on the rim, you saw that.

You stop in the middle of pulling your shirt over your head, stare straight ahead.

You wanted to suck on his thumb.

You swallow when that thought returns. Then you swallow again, and you shake your head. Yeah—good you left him alone, really. Christ, your fucking head, sometimes.

You finish pulling off your shirt, and it brushes against your nipples, which are tight and stiff.

You’re back there before can do as much as blink.

Would he suck on them? God. Would that ever be something Sherlock would try? Maybe he’d rub at them with his fingers, or his thumb. Maybe you’d suck his thumb first—he’d dip it into your mouth, stroke your tongue with it—and then he’d press it against your left nipple, because he’d have figured out in seconds that it’s more sensitive than the other. His wet thumb on your nipple. So slick at first, before your own spit would’ve been spread all over your areola. His rough fingertip on your stiff flesh. The friction…

You stare unseeingly down at your shirt in your clenched hands. You realise, suddenly, that your breathing is fast and hard. It’s loud in the otherwise still room.

Too loud. Sherlock’s still down there.

You don’t waste any time. The shirt lands on the floor, followed by everything else. You kneel on your bed with your thighs spread and your hand between them and your mouth pressed into the pillow to stifle the sounds. You keep breathing that way. Your hand tightens around yourself, and your breathing comes faster, harder, like your hand.

You think of Sherlock with the glass in his hand, and imagine him pressing the glass against his bottom lip. You think he did that, before you left. When he looked at you over it. God, he looked at you. You love it when he does. His eyes—maybe with a bit of his fringe falling over them—from underneath his lashes. Coy but knowing, knowing what you want, because he’s brilliant, so brilliant. He’d know. 

Your thighs jerk, and your knees knock together. It’s over before you can really enjoy it. 

After, you grimace a bit at the dampness you breathed into the pillow. You turn your head and put your cheek on it anyway, too lethargic to move. Your head is pleasantly blank. You don’t feel guilty yet, and maybe you’ll be able to sleep before that even starts. Untroubled sleep would be nice, for once.

A few minutes later, and from somewhere below you there comes a sound: a woman moaning, just once. You know that sound.

That’s twenty-three.

Right. You almost drank it away. But you remember, how could you not? She sent him twenty-three texts. 

You stare at the wall for long seconds, and then, eyes squeezed shut, press your face abruptly back into the pillow. 

It’s already wet anyway.

*

Some nights you can’t sleep—for particular reasons, like fifty-seven, or the war—so you stare up at the ceiling. You try to think of nothing on these nights, but of course that doesn’t work.

You’ve seen how Sherlock sleeps by now. After she drugged him, you regularly checked in on him. It’s not hard to extrapolate from here.

You think it must be like this: he sleeps naked, a long stretch of white skin under a sheet. His body is outlined, the fabric bunching up around his head, his backside, the heels of his feet. He sleeps curled in on himself, like he does when he pouts on the couch. Or maybe he sleeps with one leg straight, one drawn up. Maybe his ankles touch. Maybe he even sleeps with his mouth open, like he did when he was drugged.

Some nights, you are awake because London nights become war nights. And these nights, you can never distinguish between the actual war, or the fifty-seven kind. 

In either of these cases, in these nights, you are awake, and you think of his bare toes: they would peek out from underneath the sheet, you’re sure. He sleeps naked, and he’s tall. He’d have most of the sheet wrapped around his upper body, would keep holding onto it tightly with his fingers. The sheet would ride up, expose his toes. All of him would be covered, except his toes.

You look at the ceiling, and you think of him, and you think of his toes, and you ache.

Sometimes, you wish the nights you do that would turn into actual war nights, because you know you survived the ache of Afghanistan, but you’re not sure you’ll survive the ache of this.

Because Afghanistan was a war, yes, but it was a war you were good at, even if you were shot.

This is another kind of war. It’s one you’re afraid you’ll lose. You don’t mind getting shot in the process, but you mind not being good enough to win.


End file.
